The Write Place

“You reap what you sow Georg.” said the glowing bronzed figure, motioning to the gore soaking the trenchline.  Bodies, some in parts, few in whole, littered the ground.  The deep cry of the commanding officer called the men out of the dugout carved into the cold earth.

“But, but I was certain…” said the stout, wispy haired man.  He dropped hard to his knees, staining his clerical robes in the festering cesspool.

“Certain the laws of reality would change for you?  That the divine had somehow been split, was one with the world, or your miniscule finitude could comprehend and conquer it?” bellowed the glowing one in an ocean’s roar. 

“Just the right plan, the right method…the nous ”stammered the fleshly figure in the dust.

“The right secret? The hidden knowledge. The Logos?  Georg the liar.  Who lies foremost to himself believing the same old lie told through the ages by the father of lies.  Behold your Volksreligion,” said the snow haired figure, motioning with a pierced hand as the scene changed.  Decades seemed to pass with the wave of his hand.

“Build a culture on the sand, watch it crumble.  Believe the lie, and truth will overcome you.”
“The logos, the logic, the measure of it was right in my hands…”

“I am the Logos.  The meaning and measure of all things is not in the thing created but, in its creator. All meaning is in me.  The answer was already revealed to you in my word given to you in scripture inspired by my Spirit.  But you chose to know good and evil for yourself. You chose to play God.  Behold the end of your Volk for your wickedness,” said the risen one.  The landscape changed, not just in time but in place.  Passersby appeared to be running into the buildings and tunnels that emerged from the walkways, a city more built than Georg had ever seen.  Ringing through the air was a sound he had never heard before, scattering a language he knew.

“Here?  In the Fatherland?  What, what are you showing me? Nothing more here!”

“Much more here.  They believed the lie you told.  Now they reap the whirlwind you sowed.”

Georg looked up, hearing the whirring of a machine he could only marvel at.  Bombers flew overhead, dropping metal cases that burst into flame as they came into contact with the city. The fire tearing through Dresden swept all around them, charring flesh and filling the air with the wretched scent.

“No more, no more of this, not the process but the end….” Georg pleaded.

“Oh you will see more and more of your whirlwind, and its end is clear.”

“Like Karl Marx just after you, or  Ibd Al Malik in the 8th century.  You create a lie to make a people. You tell a lie expecting it to become true.  To create an identity that is a lie…. The absurdity finds you out.  You could have built upon me, upon the truth and blessed your people.  Instead, you have wrought the curse in my kingdom with your disordered words.  Then soon like your chaos, you too will be undone.”

Starvation filled the village that appeared before them as men in drab, long coats with red stars shot those whom they pulled from their wooden houses.  The language was familiar, but different.

“Russians?”
“Some, Ukraine.  Starving the people they do not control for the glory of the state on their path towards a gnostic utopia. Shooting those who were selfish enough not to give their food to those who held all the power. The Holodomor, millions starved in your religion. But look what your people do,” the Logos said as he raised his scepter to strike the scene.  Shattering, the image faded away to one of skeletal men standing in a yard, wearing prison striped clothes.  Men in black long coats with Stahlhelms slammed the butts of their guns against the prisoners as they moved them along. This language Georg new well. A language he lamented to hear once more.

“Germany? Germany is doing this?”

“Your disciples are doing this.  The “nation” you created is doing this.  Eight million, three hundred thousand and eighty-seven die here, in camps like this.  And Seventy-three million, eight-hundred thousand and seventy-one die in the second global conflict you are responsible for. Names and faces I know, and you killed them.”

“What would make them…” he wondered out loud.

“The course of the divine would it not be?  Whatever is is right. It’s all in the circle and part of the process. Whatever happens is the dialectic that pushes the course of history forward is good.  They are consistent, coherent in folly where you were a rambling fool, “said Jesus.  One of the guards pointed his MP at a fallen man, firing once.  The prisoner’s blood stained the ground, crying out for vengeance.

“What about you? You could have stopped it!”
“You did not want me to.  You wanted me to change,” said Jesus.

“You could have saved me; I wanted the good. It would be good.”
“All good flows from me, and I will accordingly. If you wanted the good you would have wanted me.  You did not want the good, you wanted your desires to be the good. You wanted my place,” said Jesus. “How much do I owe you?”

“You owe me the good”

“I owe you your good… That’s the truth of your foolish ways is it not? An excuse, that has cost the lives of millions. The good I owe you is repayment for what you have done.”

He stood in silence.  The scene changed again, this time to the Brandenburg gate.  Behind them the Reichstag burned as soldiers in drab olive pursued men in gray.  The rapid gun fire cut down the men Georg knew were his own.

“You earned nothing but wrath for all you have done in my name.  All the harm that has come by you and your course for history,” Jesus motioned again, changing the scene to a street in a country Georg had never been, with a people he had never seen.  “It is I who set history and have permitted this wickedness that it may be overcome, even as I overcame my own death when I came to walk upon the earth. Do not pretend I have done nothing, or that what you have done is noble for its delusion.”

“Schwarzers?” Georg asked.

“Yes, your disciples are about to kill your disciples,” he replied.  The men in black shouted angrily at the men in white hoods as the two sides rushed to each other.  The white men bore the swastika he recognized, the others a pattern he had never seen.

“Pan-African colors, intended by your disciples to ensnare their brothers in your dialectic.  Like a cancer, your sin infects the world.”

The same streets changed once more.  The street itself was paved with the colors of the rainbow, as men, women and a bizarre mix of confusion danced through the streets.  None wore clothing of any worth, some wore nothing at all.  A group of naked men danced in front of children.  Georg stood aghast, wondering as to how things could be so.  He had been so certain he had seen in history what others could not. Yet here was history, taking a root he had never dreamed in his worst nightmare.

“What is this?” Georg stood with clenched fists.

“Your work once more.  With your dialectic the same vomit is returned to by a different generation, with a different rot.  Behold their Volk,” he said.  Georg lifted his head to see a flag with six colors of the rainbow, broken apart by a triangle of other colors at its far end.

“This is not what I said… I did not tell them this…”

“Didn’t you? You simply assumed you could steal from me; you could make believe and make by belief a new world hinging on the oneness of all. Are you not a teacher of your Volk?  Did you not read what I said through Paul to the Romans? If all is one, why not sex and the body?  Why not praise it?” said Jesus. “Tell me, would you have changed anything knowing this is where it would lead?”

“I wish it had worked….”he said, sullen and defeated.

“That is why you are here,” Jesus said. The street broke apart around them, revealing a myriad of lost souls.  Some wore swastikas, some the hammer and sickle, others the prideful rainbow, men and women from every tribe, tongue and nation.  A man with thick peppered hair and a large frame cried out curses upon God.  The shouts were mixed with those of a man with a brush mustache, and another with a thick mustache and webbed hands.  Countless faces Georg knew were his fault. “Yet you would not stop having done it, you would have done it again.  Only now you will not.  Only now can you accept the truth.  Yet you will never trust in me and the truth, but the lie you exchanged it all for, suffering the work you did in life now without restraint. Georg Wilhelm Friederich Hegel. Join your “first German Philosopher” in Gehennim.”

With a single shove, Jesus pushed Hegel into the fires before closing the scene with a motion of his arm.  In the golden temple he walked up to his throne, resuming his seated place over all things.